This is my repository of some of the articles and academic papers I have written since 2007 on just about any topic under the sun. They are mostly SEO and product review articles, blog posts, commentaries, research term papers and dissertations. Feel free to use them for your purposes.

Saturday, October 20, 2012

The section
reviews extant materials in the form of research studies, books and journal
articles that define the conceptual framework where the role of communication
can be situated in the context of a multicultural diversity in the
workplace. An examination of the society
of the UAE where such project managements are carried out locally or on a
global scale provides the backdrop in the study. The value and the role of communication is
then discussed and its implications and benefits in managing team members are
then explored towards the end.

Polish academicians Kamrowska-Zaluska
and Goledzinowska (2012) calls the UAE rise from the a non-descript
underdeveloped Arab desert village of fishermen and pearl divers (Randall,
2010) in the 70s to a thriving mega-metropolis of the 21st century
as a spectacular specimen in hyper-dynamic developmental growth in a multicultural
urban setting that defined the global standard for a developing nation while at
the same emphasizing on its tradition of multiculturalism. The UAE is considered among the youngest
states in the world but also one of the most dynamic in terms of infrastructure
development and is the most cosmopolitan and westernized nation in the region
(Miller, 2011). Randall (2010) points to
its tolerant Islamic society, oil-based wealth and rapid development driven by
the influx of foreign workers from the lowly taxi driver to construction
workers, teachers and doctors who have further enriched its multicultural
diversity with English assuming a second language and widely used in business
(Miller, 2011).

Fig
1 shows the steady growth in the UAE population across its major cities. What
relevance does the UAE population growth have on the research? Not much unless the population has a
multicultural diversity involved in major infrastructure projects behind the
transformation of the country to become one of the most developed tiger
economies the Asian continent, thanks larges to its oil products and exports
(Shihab, 2001). As a result of unabated influx of foreign workers and
expatriates migrating to the Emirates, the native Emiratis are effectively outnumbered
in their own country, with around 85% of the population migrants as shown in Fig.
2. The largest ethnic groups come from
India and Pakistan which at 51% already comprise more than half the nation’s
residents. Despite the cultural diversity, the most pervasively
spoken languages are Arabic and/or English. However, the highly skilled
professionals from the west are visible but small part of this society - the
great mass of the population are South Asian contract labourers, who are
legally bound to a single employer (Davis, 2007).

The economic stability and prosperity
of the country have spawned various developmental and infrastructure projects which
attracted FDI inflows creating more jobs than the local workforce can
competently fill, thus, further increasing the attractiveness for the country to
foreign workers as evidenced by the continuous influx of migrant workers from
the region, Asia and western countries. Brenner and Kell (2006) consider this
hyper-developmental trend as a direct offshoot of the globalization that the
country has embraced since the end of the 20th century. The trend sits well with the tradition of
benign multicultural tolerance that has seen the region develop as a mecca for
various ethnic groups to settle over the centuries. Abetted and encouraged by the globalization
trends that have significantly altered the social landscape of the country
(Elsheshtawy, 2009), the concept of a “world citizen” where the world could
well be seeing the roots of starting right at the heat of the Dubai metropolis.
Needless to say, the project management needed to undertake the various developmental
projects face a social dimension of multicultural complexity that is rarely, if
at all, encountered in most first world
and developing countries in the West

The UAE is a federation of seven
emirates with laws at federal and emirate levels.

The Islamic
federation has enunciated its commitment to among the best counties in the
world by 2021. This is the national Vision
2021(www.vision2021.ae) with the slogan: “United in
ambition, and determination. “ The
vision looks at four developmental elements that will concretize this vision –
a socially responsible emirates, prosperous families, strong and active
communities, and a vibrant culture founded on progressive moderate Islamic
values. The country has embarked on several programs that will successfully
carve out this vision into a socio-economic reality over the next decade,
drawing on the country’s strong heritage of family and societal bonds,
innovation and technical skills, and progressive moderate Islamic values.

One of these programs, and the most
consequential of them, is the development of the country’s infrastructures,
industries and commerce that will tap on the best-of-breed disciplines and
practices from disparate peoples, mostly from the Western, and East and
Southeast Asian nations as well as developing countries that have achieved
economic and industrial successes. What
this implies to local enterprises engaged in managing projects and to the
government that endorses such projects is the need for an added dimension of
micromanaging the social and cultural diversity in project management – something
that has not bedevilled industrialized nations who have undertaken similar
projects in the past. These countries
have tapped more on their local expertise, presenting no significant
socio-cultural barriers as what now confronts the UAE today and over the last
decade is achieving its current status as a world class country with higher
aspirations to achieving the best for its Vision 2021.

Table 1:
Percentage of migrants to total population in the UAE from 1990 to 2010
(Source: United Nations, Department of Economic and
Social Affairs, Population Division (2009). Trends in International Migrant
Stock: The 2008 Revision (United Nations database, POP/DB/MIG/Stock/Rev.2008).

Year

International migrants as a
percentage of the population

Estimated number of
international migrants at mid-year

1990

71.3

1 330 324

1995

70.6

1 715 980

2000

70.6

2 286 174

2005

70.0

2 863 027

2010

70.0

3 293 264

Table 1
shows a high percentage of foreign mix in the UAE population which currently
stands at roughly 4.7 million as of 2010, while Figure 3 shows the mix of
nationalities comprising these migrant workers (UN, 2012). It is clear that
foreign stock dominates the country’s population and this high level of
migratory influx can be traced to the government’s liberal policies and the
local people’s tolerant attitudes despite having a culture and religion
considered less tolerant than their counterparts in Western and East Asian
countries.

Recognizing the inherent problems
that have widespread and consistent reach in managing diverse cultures to bring
the country’s vision to reality, the Dubai government has taken the necessary
steps to support companies engaged in these projects. Towards Vision 2021, the
government has enunciated a three-headed strategic program that will promote
effective government communication (UAE 2011).
These are as follows:

• Enhance the visibility and credibility of the Federal Government by fully
utilizing existing and new communication channels to reach all key
segments, and ensuring fact based
communication and media engagement in a
proactive manner

• Create a distinct and uniﬁed Federal Government identity by developing
and implementing uniﬁed standards for the Federal Government’s identity

• Enhance the role of communication in policy-making and cultural change
by utilizing communication as an input to policy-making and strategy
development, leveraging communication to support policy execution, promoting
internal communication tools, and building communication systems, capacities
and skills

One of the pillars supporting these
strategies is clearly driven by communication and media engagement considered
essential is reshaping the cultural dynamics of a nation that has been largely
dependent on a multicultural mix of foreign and local workforce behind projects
that have catapulted the nation to where it is today.

Recently, Gulfnews reported that the
UAE Ministry of Labour reiterated its commitment to implement the instructions
of the country’s Head of State, President Sheikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan to
protect the rights of contractual workers involved in local projects (Gulfnews,
2012). Mubarak Saeed Al Daheri, the
Labour Undersecretary made clear this commitments to enforce relevant
legislation as well as supervisory and regulatory policies to maintain a
balanced relationships between local employers and foreign contractual workers
in a speech before a Nepalese delegation to discuss and promote Nepalese
workers in the UAE.

Property development projects in the
UAE are composed of highly diverse management teams in one major construction
project that spanned almost a decade to complete, the presence of several
nationalities with different cultures, religions, values and languages working
as project participants created numerous challenges. Orrill (2010) recounts that the challenges that
the Palm Island Jumeirah project faces between 200 when it\started and 2008
when it was completed, mostly stemmed from several factors that can be traced
to divergent norms and values, status
hierarchies and communication barriers, to mention the major ones.

The Burj Khalifa project won the
Best Project of the Year at the 2010 Middle East Architect Awards (Crowcroft,
2010) and while it has been prominently in global news as being the world’s
tallest building in the world and sharing a spotlight with Tom Cruise in the 4th
instalment of the Mission Impossible franchise, the project has had its share
of labor problems. As a backgrounder,
the construction project exemplified what a multicultural project is. The property is owned by a local property
development firm with global reach - Emaar Properties, which awarded the design
work to a US firm - Skidmore, Owings and Merrill – the same design firm behind
the Sears Tower in Chicago and the new One World Trade Center in New York, the
London-based multinational engineering consultants, and Hyder Consulting as
supervising engineers along with the NORR Group Consultants International
LTD. The engineering design employed a
modern structural innovation invented by a Bangladeshi, Fazlure Rahman Khan. Meanwhile the South Korean company Samsung
Engineering & Construction which also built the Petronas Twin Towers and
Taipei 101 was chosen to construct the tower in a joint venture with Belgian
company BERSIX and a local firm Arabtec, employing workers primarily from South
Asia (India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh). The
US-based Tuner Construction Co was chosen as the project manager.

In most
post-project assessments, communication is often among the areas that could
have better served a smoother project implementation if not precluded its
failure, in part or in whole (Cornelius & Associates, n.d.). A breakdown in
communication can cause problems in any project management effort and this gets
even more complicated in a multicultural project. This can occur at various
levels or hierarchies in a project team can include any or a combination of the
following:

·The Construction , Engineering and
Infrastructure Management or CEIM (2010) reported that a condominium project in
Ho Chi Minh employing contractual workers and engineering experts from a few
countries suffered interpersonal and
intra-group communication problems which included a failure to generate or
encourage information flow in a face-to-face meetings between team members as
well as inter-group communication problems where interactions between the team
and suppliers, contractors, principals, and other stakeholders occur very
frequently at any point or time during the project duration.

·The same construction project experienced a
fundamental failure to identify and assess the project stakeholders and their
specific information needs, suitable channels of information flow (online
chats, emails, paper submissions, etc.) and frequency or interaction between
the project team and stakeholders. This could
have been addressed of at the very start of a project engagement and a project
charter identifying a matrix of reporting methods, recipients and reporting
accountabilities will help in addressing this problem.

·Several other communication problems were experienced
such as the use of abusive language, wrong timing of information flow such as
delayed status updates and assessment of team member performance, and failure
to understand the needs and concerns of team members often occasioned by a
failure to listen attentively to what members are saying or take them
seriously.

Communication can be difficult
enough when team members speak the same language in a homogenous cultural
setting (Behfar, Kern & Brett, 2006) .
Finding the right words and phrasing nuances to motivate workers can be
challenging but this is nothing compared to a team with dozens of different
languages in a heterogeneous multicultural setting with only a few speaking more than one that can be understood by most,
such as English. Table 2 shows the number of nationalities involved with
Jumeirah project (Orrill 2012) and the end result is a multi-cultural project
innately challenged by natural communication barriers. Orrill (2012) has
enumerated several problems in the Jumeirah related to cultural diversity but
communication constituted a major part the often derailed efforts to achieve
teamwork, cooperation and collaboration among various nationals working in the
project. This often led to delayed
deliverables and conflicts that almost led to violence between certain ethnic
groups.

Communication is not just about
being able to send a message through the facility of spoken or written
communication, no matter how comprehensively or eloquently done. It is also the ability to listen, understand
and digest meanings from what others are saying. David Nunan (1997)
describes listening as having fundamental importance in the communication
process. Gillian Brown (1990) calls it
oracy, or the ability to both listen and speak the language as being
fundamental to communicative competence and literacy. The next level is the ability to read and
write in the language and this ability completes the communicative literacy
when learning ESL (English as a Second Language).

In another
level, communicative incompetence can be seen when there are discrepancies in
phrasing minutes of a meeting with what actually transpired during the
meeting. This can be merely a clerical
error to proofread and is truly a failure to understand and document the
proceedings of a meeting. Phrasing
inaccuracies of meeting minutes communicate different messages to different
parties. Even if the language is
perfectly clear, it is the various meanings and concepts that lie behind the
actual words that can become an issue of misinterpretation.

A characteristic of
projects in the UAE that is endemic to the UAE society despite having a high
tolerance level of multi-ethnicity is that workers are ranked according to
status hierarchies or their worth to a project management organization. In the West, this would be the equivalent of
cultural stereotypes and biases. It was
not only obvious in the Jumeirah project (Orrill 2010), but is evident in the
wider UAE societies, though noticeably fading over time. Even the caste system
ingrained in the culture of Indians became evident as biases emerged to give
problems in the organization of the team that would not have occurred if this
particular ethnic group were not employed.

A random
sampling of a few online job placement ads for a project management position in
a number of first rate companies in the UAE shows that among the qualifications
in technical and managerial skills, there is a consistent requirement for
communication skills. This clearly
points to the need for communication competence as integral to project
management positions in the country (Buehring, 2009). Table 3 shows four
sampled online job placement ads with communications skills among the
requirements for project management positions.

·Minimum
of 5 years Product Management experience in Telecommunications and or IT
environment specializing on IP related products.

·Product
management skills product knowledge, development of products, product pricing
and the establishment of products in the market.

·Process
and business skills demonstrate deep understanding of the operational process
implication of existing mobile communication products and services and the
enhancement thereof throughout the company.

·Customer
focus skills are dedicated to meet the expectations and requirements of
internal and external customers. Get first-hand customer information and uses
it for improvement of products. Acts with customers in mind.

·Interpersonal
skills relates well to all kinds of people. Uses diplomacy and act tact. Can
diffuse even high-tension situations comfortably.

·Communication skills with
the ability able to communicate clearly. Can get messages across that have
the desired effect. Can convince people. Written communication skills is able
to write clearly in a number of different communication settings and styles.
Can get messages across that have the desired effect.

·Expertise
in developing and assessing business plans and monitoring actual data.
Expertise in Project Management.

·Analytical
skills ability to assess data and make conclusions. University Degree or
equivalent qualification in Business Administration, Marketing, or Telecom
Engineering.

·The Project Director shall have a
degree in Electrical or Electronics Engineering from a university or
equivalent qualification, a master's degree or higher is desired.

·The Project Director shall possess an excellent command of
the English language. Knowledge of the Arabic language would be an advantage.

·The Project Director shall have at
least 15 years previous experience in planning, design and project management
of large telecommunication projects, and at least 5 years in a responsible
position managing large departments. In particular reference shall be made to
design of state-of-the-art Fixed and Mobile networks.

Etisalat is the Middle East’s largest operator and the
GCC’s third largest corporation. With a market value of approximately Dhs. 80
billion (USD 20 billion) and annual revenues of over Dhs. 32 billion (USD 8.7
billion) Etisalat is today on the verge of being numbered amongst the top ten
operators in the world

Desired Skills & Experience

·Experience
in Cloud product management, product development and commercialization.

Project
management in any organisation rests at two levels - the macro and the micro
levels. Modesto and Tichapondwa (2010) pointed out that on the broader macro
level, project management ensures that what is undertaken, small or major, is achieved
or delivered on time, within budget and complying with specified standards. On
the detailed micro level, project management is all about encouraging and
nurturing teamwork and participative collaboration in the workplace, ensuring
deadlines and budgets are met; reducing cost, managing risks, and ensuring that
important documents and information is shared among members of the team. The micro level activities are not as
difficult to attain if every member of the team has a common understanding of what
needs to be done, where they are headed, and how to get there. This is made possible with communicative
competence that ensures a steady stream of information exchange understood by
everyone on the team.

A project
can be defined as a multidisciplinary initiative to bring about change (Baume
et al, 2002). The change can be as
simple as initiating a procedure alteration in the way certain aspects of an
organization does its work and confined to just an office or department, or it
can be as monumental as building the world’s tallest skyscraper or longest
bridge spanning cities and municipalities. Achieving the change requires
meeting a set of specific objectives, within a timescale and an allocated set
of resources, and in a given context (community, government, business, etc.). Baume et al (2002) list the attributes of a best
of breed project management practice as having the following:

1.a clear purpose that can be achieved in a
limited time;

2.a clear end when the outcome has been achieved;

3.resources to achieve specific outcomes;

4.a sponsor who expects on-time delivery of
outcomes and within budgets,; and

All the
attributes require that the relevant ideas and information are clearly
communicated and understood by stakeholders in the project especially in the
areas of decision making, collaborating and understanding the overall task
sequences, especially in complex projects (Senescu, Aranda-Mena & Haymaker,
2011). Haughey (2009) defined a
stakeholder as anyone or group that has an interest in the project or will be
impacted by its deliverables or outcomes. It is important to assess and understand the
values that stakeholders have in order to address them properly throughout the
project duration. These project stakeholders are the project sponsors, higher management,
project team members, 3rd parties involved with supplying and
supporting the project and the people, organizations or communities that will
be affected by its implementation. The
latter could be indigenous tribes or old historic structures that may be
displaced by the project.

Among the
various skills that a project managers needs to have, such as organizational,
time and resource management, and the relevant technical skills, competence in
communication is considered the most fundamental and critical ingredient to the
success of a project (Buehring, 2009).
Kerzner (2001) defines communication as the sending and receiving of
messages that includes verbal and written messages, how the message is
expressed and understood, and the timely exchange of the right
information. As Row (2010) pointed out,
the main advantages of communication is that it greatly reduces
misunderstanding among project stakeholders and team members while fostering
teamwork and a healthy social and interactive relationship between them. Sharing knowledge and fostering awareness of
what needs to be done and what is expected of each team members through regular
and open channels of communication can
lead to a more productive involvement that can spell the difference between
failure and success of the project (Buehring, 2009). This cannot be served without effective
communication skills on the part of project management leaders. In fact, just
about every aspect of project management cannot be done successfully without
sufficient communication on the part of project manager and the team members
(Buehring, 2009). Every activity
undertaken in project management is driven with communication competence,
whether verbal or written, from start to finish. Communication becomes not only
crucial to a project but is considered the lifeblood of any project
undertaking, especially one where there is the potential for misunderstanding
which is often the cause of failure in a project (Awati, 2008).

But it gets
more acutely demanding in a multicultural setting occasioned by the
globalization perspectives of today’s business (Ochieng & Price, 2009).
Jehn et al (1999) showed how the communication needs get a proportionate
diversity in terms of perspectives, insights, and values when dealing with
various cultures in a project. Ochieng &
Price (2009) established in their studies of projects in the UK and Kenya that
effective cross cultural communication becomes acutely critical as an enabler
in a global context where project tasks are undertaken by a workforce with
several linguistic and cultural differences. Having the right communication
skills to manage cultural differences and potential cross-cultural conflicts as
seen in the Jumeirah project is really all about people management (Dainty et
al, 2007) with cultural issues as the focus.

Behaviour arising from the influence
of culture is basically what defines the differences among team members coming
from different lands and poses a potential for disrupting what would otherwise
be a smooth project implementation unless properly managed. The level of communication that takes place
in a multicultural setting is termed variously as intercultural or
cross-cultural communication (Bennett, 1998; ComGAP, 2011). It takes place when persons influenced by differing
cultural backgrounds negotiate through shared experiences or situation in an
interactive setting such as what would be obtained in a project. One
way to define it is to contrast it with monocultural communication where
message is sent based on similarities such as a common language and shared
values and where such similarities enable people to practice or anticipate
responses to certain messages as well as take for granted certain messages
based on shared or common assumptions (Bennett, 1998). In cross-cultural commination, these
assumption based on similarities rarely exist and there are more messages which
cannot be taken for granted. By
definition, different cultures have different languages, behavioral motivations
and manifestations, as well as biases and values. For this reason, communicative
approaches to in a cross-cultural setting need to assume a wider perspective
encourage the acceptance of difference.

After
having asserted that project management cannot do without communication skills,
the following is an explicit breakdown of the major areas or tasks where
communication strategies are necessary (Kerzner, 2011 and Ochieng et al, 2009)
in any project management undertaking, whether monocultural or multicultural in
composition.

·Initial
Project Planning

Documenting
the project charter containing its rationale, manpower and resource
requirements, duration and other details needed to operationalize a project is
basic to initiating a project for which management approvals are secured prior
to starting a project. This is both a
written and oral communication exercise that often spells the difference
between approval the project or not.

·Project
objective setting and managing expectations

Eﬀective
project communication needs to establish from the start what the team members
can expect in terms of having clearly delineated lines of authority,
accountability, responsibility, problem and conflict resolution channels,
deliverables and sanctions for failures.

·Project
Team Development

The
need for a project team to work as one like a sports team cannot be overstated
and communication is paramount in enabling the Project Manager to foster this
which gets more demanding with multi-ethnic groups in the team. Smith & Imbrie (2005) point to team
development and understanding the dynamics of interpersonal relationships in a
group as critical in any project management. Performance assessment of individual team
members requires tactful communication skill and even a level of psychological
skill to manage potentially damaging self-esteem and expectations. In
addition, the use online collaboration tools that harness each team member’s
skills to improve on shared documents is an added dimension to the team spirit
and will require a common language to achieve.

·Project
Status Updates

Performance
updates to higher management as well as getting status updates from the project
team members comprise the routine tasks expected in monitoring the progress of
any project undertaking. Several techniques can
be used for the purpose such as end of day, weekly and monthly performance reviews, actual versus planned accomplishments using
PERT/CPM, variance analysis in actual vs. budget reporting, change requests,
risk analysis and problem solving, dispute resolution reports, and trend
analysis. All these require significant verbal
and written communication skills.

·Failure
Reporting

Considered
part of project status updates, major failures and problems that adversely affect
the progress of the project or require greater resource allocation as a result
needs to be communicated to the project stakeholders and higher management.
This requires some diplomatic tact as well negotiation skill in the
communication process to secure approval or buy-in from higher management. Situations
such as this have political implication where vest interested from various
stakeholders will wants to extract the most value out of their involvement in
the project (Awati, 2008).

·Conflict
Management

In any aggrupation of
people, whether in social, political or business circles, conflicts are bound
to develop between certain individuals or between groups. Differing opinions, values and beliefs among
locals in a team can already trigger conflicts and this achieves a heightened dimension
between multi-racial folks mixed in a group. Resolving disputes among the ranks
is a major task of business managers and it gets more complicated when project
managers deal with multicultural elements within his or her project team. Again,
the issue of politics enter the picture and proper communication that can
weather the storms arising from internal conflicts as well as those occasion
with external parties such as suppliers and support corporate departments will
be needed (Awati, 2008).

·Collaborative
Project Engagement

Increasing project
complexity such as those in telecommunications, infrastructure, and
construction project tend to further complicate the need for communication,
most especially in multicultural projects.
This complexity fuels a heightened demand for the use of technology solutions
in riding through the communication effort (Senescu et al, 2011). There are now several collaborative online
tools that allow project team members to post or upload project-related documents
to a site for purposes of being shared to other team members and enable
collaborative updating that benefits all team members. Collaboration will
require a common ability to input changes to documents which require
understanding and crafting the right use of language used in the documents so
that they can be read and understood by team members.

Several project management
challenges that benefit from effective communication have been shown to
confront project managers regardless of cultural heterogeneity (Behfar et al, 2006). These include, adhering to project
objectives, work rules, acceptable project team relationships and behavior, as
well as the style of message delivery. However,
Behfar et al (2005) indicated that culturally diverse teams create complexities
in terms of culture-bound perspectives, perceptions of what is respectable
behavior and level of fairness among team members, gender valuation especially
with regards women, religious practices and language fluencies.

While the structural components of
language are important, the social aspects of communication are even more
critical. This involves understanding
the expressions that affect the social dimension of communication or what is
termed as non-verbal cues that have meaning outside of their literal abstract
representations in literal language (Lewis, 2006). Cassel, Nakano, Bickmore, Sidner and Rich (2007)
indicated that nearly three-quarters of descriptive discourses come with
non-verbal gestures. Vintean (2007)
pointed out that the skill of understanding non-verbal communication is often
about understanding the feeling of people, their attitudes, prejudices and
beliefs which comprise much of the underlying meanings behind deal-making,
negotiations and diplomatic entanglements. This becomes more heightened when
dealing with people from disparate cultures.

Being ethnocentric
has no place in a multicultural project management. It means being comfortable
working within the confines of the culture one has been born and raised
(Bennett, 1998). On the other hand, as
Bennett (1998) define it, being ethnorelative means having the intercultural
sensitivity to adapt to one’s judgements and actions to various interpersonal
settings where different people from different backgrounds congregate and must
share a common objective. Being able to
recognize and accept this variability in culture-based behavior is the first
step in adapting to the reality and create the seeds of ethnorelativity vital
in managing multicultural projects.

As
of 2006, the Commonwealth Nations Research
Society (CNRS, 2008) reported on its website that there were about 375 million
native English speakers (US, UK, Canada Australia and New Zealand), and a total
of over 1.5 billion native and non-native English speakers worldwide. Can the
UAE educational system go wrong teaching English as a second language (ESL) to
its Emirati citizens? Given the data on
foreign contractual workers and migrants provided in Figures 2 and 3, teaching
ESL could provide strategic advantage to Emirati citizens and further bring the
country to greater global attractiveness.

Table 4: Countries with English as a stated
official language or widely spoken (Sources CNRS, 2008)

Table 4 shows several countries in the Arab world along
with several Asian and African nations, many of which have workers that
comprise the migrant worker demographics of the UAE, have adopted English as
stated or implicit official language status or at least widely understood and
spoken. Almost all the Arab countries have a high level of English literacy,
along with India, the Philippines, Pakistan, Bangladesh and most African
countries which show a high level of ESL proficiency. The UAE can benefit from teaching ESL to its
citizens, which is already being actively pursued. Recent official acts of the Ministry of
Education along with the Abu-Dhabi Educational Council have placed greater
emphasis on ESL starting in grade schools with the introduction of technology
to promote learning in all schools in the emirates (Ismail et al, 2012). Hence, this is a clear indication that it
makes sense for companies operating in the UAE to have their staff trained in
ESL or further develop those who already use ESL to a lesser or greater degree
in their work.

Not all are problems when talking
about multicultural projects. The same
attributes of cultural diversity that potentially could spawn communication
barriers also provide significant advantage to a project. Maznevski (1994) and McLeod & Lobel
(1992) pointed out that cultural diversity offers entirely different
perspectives and skill sets that can generate more high quality ideas in a
brainstorming session to resolve project issues that would not emerge in a
mono-cultural setting. Jackson et al
(1992) confirms this by showing that multicultural teams are often more
productive than homogenous teams when identifying problems and generating
solutions. But from both ends of the
picture, communication remains a vital tool or avenue to smoothen relationships
on one end and serving as the conduit to get those ideas understood and implemented.

The
literature review highlighted the significant exposure of the UAE to a
culturally diverse society where majority of its residents have settled in the
country from various other nations within the Middle East and Asian continents,
apart from the migrant workers that have been attracted to the country’s
various job opportunities in various infrastructure projects. Given this multicultural diversity that not
only permeate UAE society but is also present in the infrastructure and
business projects in the public and private sectors of the nations, there is a
clear impetus for UAE project managers to exercise significant communicative
competence in managing the disparate peoples comprising the various projects
that businesses in the country often undertake. This communicative competence
calls for a second language such as English that serves as a second language
with which the disparate ethnic groups in a project team can understand the
information that needs to be communicated within the group.

Based on
the literature review discussed in the preceding sections of this chapter, a
clear conceptual framework emerges which will be used to confine and delineate
the subsequent primary data collection process that the study undertakes. Figure 4 graphically represents the role of
communication in successfully delivering project management expectations in the
context of UAE’s multi-ethnic society that has likewise defined the work
environment that project managers deal with.
After completing this secondary data collection process in creating the
conceptual framework of the study, the subsequent sections detail the primary
data collection meant to further explore the value of communication in a
multicultural project management setting in the UAE.

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About Me

Semi-retired since 2009 and now working as a freelance photo editor/colorist and online writer. Started out as an avionics mechanic at Philippine Airlines, transferred to its Marketing and IT departments before becoming the MIS head for Citadel Holdings. Then went on to become BPO Mobilization Manager at Accenture and finally Business Development Director at an Ads agency.